Table of Contents

ABC News Hurricane Katrina Anniversary Poll, August 2006 (ICPSR 4664)

Principal Investigator(s):ABC News

Summary:

This special topic poll, conducted August 14-20, 2006, is
part of a continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public
opinion on various political and social issues. The focus of this data
collection was on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Part
1, FEMA Counties, contains data from a sample of 501 adults living in
counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that were designated
as Hurricane Katrina disaster areas. Part 2, Orleans Parish Including
Oversamples, contain... (more info)

This special topic poll, conducted August 14-20, 2006, is
part of a continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public
opinion on various political and social issues. The focus of this data
collection was on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Part
1, FEMA Counties, contains data from a sample of 501 adults living in
counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that were designated
as Hurricane Katrina disaster areas. Part 2, Orleans Parish Including
Oversamples, contains data on respondents living in Orleans Parish,
Louisiana, including oversamples of 160 respondents contacted via
landline telephones, and 120 respondents contacted via cell phones.
Respondents were asked to rate the recovery efforts of federal, state,
and local governments with respect to Hurricane Katrina, and how much
trust and confidence they had in the federal government and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) ability to respond to
another disaster. Opinions were collected on whether Hurricane Katrina
was the result of global climate change or just a severe weather
event. Information was collected about the damage caused to
respondents' residence and personal property, as well as the severity
of the damage, how much of the losses were insured, and whether
recovery had already occurred. Respondents were asked to rate the
impact Hurricane Katrina had had on their life, whether they suffered
a long-term negative impact on their finances, health, and emotional
well-being, and whether any friends or family members were seriously
injured or killed as as a result of the hurricane. A series of
questions asked respondents to rate the job of groups involved with
assisting recovery, such as the the United States Small Business
Administration, state relief agencies, and insurance companies. Views
were sought concerning whether respondents' trust in the government
and fellow man was affected by the hurricane, how much they worried
about another hurricane occurring, and how much extra stress was
created by the possibility of another hurricane. Additional topics
addressed whether race and poverty affected the recovery effort, and
whether problems with the relief effort were an indication of racial
inequality in the United States. Demographic variables include sex,
age, race, education level, household income, political party
affiliation, political philosophy, employment status, marital status,
and type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural).

Universe:
Persons aged 18 and over living in households with
landline telephones and cell phones in the counties designated
as Hurricane Katrina disaster areas in Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Alabama.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

(1) This poll includes two oversamples, as identified
in the SAMPTYPE variable. (2) Data on respondents in Part 1 who lived
in Orleans parish also appear in Part 2 and can be matched using the
RESPNO variable. (3) The data available for download are not weighted
and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (4) Original
reports using these data may be found via the
ABC News Polling
Unit Web site. (5) System-missing values were recoded to -1. (6)
The FIPS and ZIP variables were recoded for confidentiality. (7)
Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks. (8)
Value labels for unknown/missing codes were added in the variables
CBSATYPE, CSA, USR, REG4, STCODE, and DMA. (9) The CASEID variable was
created for use with online analysis. (10) The variables PCTBLACK,
PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, CONGDIST, BLOCKCNT, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV,
ZIP, and NIELSMKT were converted from character to numeric. (11)
According to the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable
Q909 also included respondents who answered that they had attended a
technical school.

Methodology

Sample:
Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within
households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the
household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the
interview.

Weight:
The weight variable (WTS) should be used in
analyzing the data in Part 1 only. These data were weighted
using demographic information from the Census to adjust for
sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values.
Respondents customarily were classified into one of 48 cells
based on age, race, sex, and education. Weights were assigned
so the proportion in each of these 48 cells matched the
actual population proportion according to the
Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey.

Mode of Data Collection:
telephone interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: